Seijin no Hi
by Risu-Rizu
Summary: The kids of Nerima prepare for their coming of age ceremony, but what's this? Adulthood proves to be even STUPIDER than adolescence! Ranma and Akane reflect on their time together in the WAFFy second chapter.
1. Chapter 1

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SEIJIN NO HI

A Fanfiction by Rizu

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DISCLAIMER: NO, I don't own 'em, and if you honestly think that I would claim such a thing after submitting stories about them to a place called fanfiction.net, you need to get the hell off the Internet and go back to eating paint chips.

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ABOUT THE HOLIDAY: _Seijin no hi_ is a Japanese holiday that takes place on the second Monday of every January. It used to take place on the fixed date of January 15th, but in 1999, they changed it to the second Monday of January so that everybody in the nation could get a three-day weekend. On this day, people who have either turned twenty since April of the previous year--or are about to turn twenty before April of the current year--go to Buddhist or Shinto shrines with their friends and families to celebrate their passage into adulthood. The Japanese government legally recognizes the age of twenty as the year that a person can begin to vote, drink, marry without parental consent, gamble, and smoke, though this age isn't only about what the Japanese government recognizes in its citizens. The holiday carries with it many social nuances as well, as society observes those who were once children now coming into their own as mature adults. The whole thing is somewhat like a Jewish bar/bat mitzvah. It's a time to celebrate the freedoms of adulthood, and the responsibilities that come along with it as well. 

In generations past, seijin no hi has been considered by young people to a bigger, more important celebration than by today's young adults, though it's still considered a fun and joyous event for all involved. The biggest gripe the older generations have had in recent years, however, is that the kids today don't even "stop to think about what coming of age really means". I guess elders being disappointed in the way youths behave is a universal thing, heh.

But what's the festival doing in this story? Well, considering that I don't think Ranma and Akane will get married any time soon thanks to the way the manga left off, four years later, the members of the Nerima crew are getting ready for their coming of age ceremony, and still acting pretty much the same way they were acting when they were all sixteen. Only older. I liked the idea of having all the kids "grow up", so to speak, and the idea has been floating around in my head for some time. _Min'na, yonde kudasai! Hihyou shite o wasurenai! _Don't forget to review!

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CHAPTER #1

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Nodoka pulled on the antique brass rings on her old mahogany chest of drawers as Ranma and Genma sat, cross-legged, behind her. The sound of the wood groaning under the weight of the masses of neatly arranged sewing materials echoed throughout the Tendou sitting room, and Nodoka stared down in wonder at the contents inside the red drawer. Genma looked intently through glinting spectacles upon his wife's small, white hands as she reached into the bowels of the drawer and stroked several folded pieces of black, blue, and red fabric. Ranma watched as well, though with visibly less enthusiasm. To him, the emergence of the fabric from his mother's sewing drawers implied that he was about to sit through hours of annoying alterations, and arguing with his father about the reason he even had to go through the tedious process at all.

The "tedious process", of course, being not only the alterations themselves, but the _seijin-shiki_, coming of age festival, which was coming up next week. He needed his ceremonial clothes, and he was almost positive that his parents would never approve of him wearing the more popular Western-style suit to the event, like so many other young men his age would be doing. Wearing a suit would mean he would be done with the fitting within thirty minutes, if that. Wearing the more traditional _hakama_ would mean several hours of being bored and standing with his arms out, due to his mother's meticulous nature about such things, while the clothes were fitted ever-so-precisely to his frame. Even so, Ranma figured it was worth a shot.

"Can't I just wear a suit like the other guys?" Ranma sighed as the Saotome matriarch pulled the black fabric close to her body and hugged the coarse, thick material. Upon hearing his son's childish protests, Genma gave a light grunt and jerked the boy in the ribs with his elbow. Ranma silently rubbed his side and glared at his old man out of the corner of his eye.

The brunette woman with slivers of silver streaking gracefully through her hair calmly closed the drawer and turned around in response to the plea of her 19-year-old son. She smiled a gentle, motherly smile ... a motherly smile that was not to be argued with. "Nonsense, Ranma," she chided gently. "You'll look wonderful in the traditional hakama, just as your father did during his seijin-shiki."

The rotund man put a hand behind his head and let out a large belly laugh at the memory of that day so long ago. "Nodoka! But you've only seen pictures of me from back then! AH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!" It was a pretty poor attempt at feigned humility, Ranma thought, if that had been what Genma had been aiming for. Having had lived with only his father for the better part of his life, however, the boy figured that the old fool had probably meant to sound modest, and rolled his eyes, knowing his father's egotism a bit better than that.

"Nevertheless, you were very handsome--and so masculine," Nodoka politely replied, up until the word "masculine", at which point, she was unable to contain the glee breaking through her voice. She turned to Ranma again with a faint but heartening smile, hoping that that same masculinity would radiate from her own son on the special day as well. "Besides... the traditional hakama is a martial artist family tradition, Ranma dear."

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"Unnh!_" _Genma agreed in a gruff voice, nodding pompously. "A Western suit does not befit the heir to the Saotome-ryuu, especially when he emerges into manhood as the martial artist that he is. You will wear the hakama to honor the Anything-Goes school." On the last sentence, he gave a firm nod, as if he were very pleased with what the way he had actually exercised some parental authority over his irrepressible offspring (not to mention that, with Nodoka present, he was able to get away with it without Ranma kneeing him in the face).

Ranma sighed at the both of them, though, to be sure, he was more annoyed with his father than with his mother. If his mother hadn't been in the room, he wouldn't have hesitated to leap to his feet and challenge the old man to a bout, but with her quiet femininity keeping him in check, he was forced to attempt something that doesn't come easily to Saotome men: bite his tongue. He propped his arm up on his knee and placed his chin in his hand, his mouth twisting into a pout. "I guess," he grunted unhappily. _I'll beat the crap out of 'im later,_ the boy consoled himself in annoyance.

Just as he'd expected, he was forced to stand in the same rigid position for hours on end while his mother fussed over the pleats in the willowy pair of pants, and his father sat on the opposite end of the room guffawing through mouthfuls of crackers at sitcoms with Tendou-ojiisan, who had padded into the living room after a while with the intention of watching a Samurai drama, but got sucked into watching the sitcoms with Saotome anyway. As Nodoka's nimble fingers danced across the rough fabric, pinning this, and tucking that, she talked excitedly of the events to come in the upcoming week, perfectly aware that her son's attention was often on the TV and not on her words. Still, she was just happy to be able to talk to someone and have them listen—even if it was only during the commercials.

At one point, she'd even ventured to ask him if he'd be escorting Akane to the ceremony that would be held at the Nerima temple. That got his attention. She smiled privately when she saw his body twitch nervously, and his eyes flick in embarrassment over the TV screen across the room. "I... how should I know?" he had muttered in reply, sounding a bit more irritated than he'd intended to sound. If only he'd had the sense to look at her, he would have realized that his mother's eyes were twinkling with a distinct mischief, but, then again, he was generally oblivious to how teasing and prankish his mother could be with him sometimes. Nonetheless, his boyish belief that she was too refined and elegant to be playful was a trait of his she found very cute.

As she put some of the finishing touches on the garment, humming lightly to herself as she had run out of things to say, he looked down at his legs with astonishment. He'd seen countless other men on different occasions wear hakama. It _was_ traditional martial arts attire, after all. In fact, that idiot Kuno had made it a point to wear his hakama to his classes every day back in high school, so it wasn't as if these clothes were an unusual sight for him But for some reason, he was surprised at how good the ancestral pants looked on his own body, and he was somewhat proud of the way the traditional flaps of fabric hung from his waist. He wiggled his legs a bit, partly to ward off the sleepiness coming into his limbs from standing in the same position for so long, and partly to check if his legs still existed underneath the massive folds of fabric. His mother caught a glimpse of his expression and smiled as she continued stitching around his waistline. _Very masculine, indeed,_ she thought proudly to herself.

Nabiki's thin frame suddenly occupied the doorway meeting the hall and the sitting room. She had her arms folded, and she leaned against the doorframe, looking down at her dad on the floor. "Hey, dad," she inquired in her low voice, "what are we having for dinner?"

Soun looked up silently at his middle daughter for a moment before letting his eyes fall back to the TV. "Nodoka should know," he said simply.

"Saotome-obasan," Nabiki asked, having every intention of asking the older woman about dinner. She stopped herself when she saw Ranma standing there, his arms outstretched to let his mother make crude practice stitches around his waist. He caught her glance and lowered his eyelids at her, non-verbally challenging her to say something further about his current state. She gave him a sarcastic smile and gladly took him up on the offer. "Oh, Ranma, aren't you proud! You and Kuno-chan could almost be brothers in those hakama of yours."

"Shut up."

"Now, Ranma, Nabiki," the Saotome matron calmly scolded as she snipped the thread with her teeth and leaned back on her knees to smooth a hand over her needlework. "We're going to have sukiyaki tonight, dear," she quickly answered in order to get Nabiki's mind back to dinner and off of aggravating Ranma.

"Sukiyaki!" Genma and Soun said in tandem as they turned about to face her.

"But beef is so expensive," Soun said, worry pulling his eyebrows together at the middle. "Are you sure we have enough money for such a luxury?"

Nodoka gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm sure, Tendou-san. We've been eating rather cheaply this month, so we had just enough left over for this one treat." She suddenly looked surprised as she remembered something. She looked up at her son with round eyes and brought a coy hand to her mouth. "Oh, Ranma, that reminds me: we need beef and harusame noodles."

To Nodoka's and Ranma's mild annoyance, the other three residents of the room face faulted upon hearing that the most crucial ingredients to the dish didn't even exist in the house yet.

"Y-yeah no problem, mom."

Genma turned to Soun with a slightly guilty look upon his face. "I'll go with him. We, ah seem to be out of crackers," he explained as he shook the empty bag.

"HEY, Saotome-kun! Those were from my secret stash!" a shocked Soun yelled as tears trickled in tiny rivers down his cheeks.

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Ranma and Genma walked along the frosty streets of the Tokyo suburb, carrying back several brown paper bags of food to the Tendou dojo. A cold wind went tracing up along the backs of their heels as they walked, though Ranma was becoming very attentive of his old man's silence. They'd walked about a kilometer by this time, and not so much of a word was uttered between them. Usually by this point, his dad would have torn into some of the cookies or crackers they'd bought, and would be happily munching away on them all the way back to the house. Instead, the bespectacled man looked uneasy, and buried in thought.

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"Yo, oyaji," Ranma finally interrupted. "What's the matter?"

His father looked in the boy's direction with eyebrows raised. "Uhhn?" he questioned before peering back into the sack of food in front of him. "Oh. I was only thinking."

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'Thinking'? Ranma thought worriedly to himself. That wasn't like his dad. _Better say something sarcastic before it seems like you're losing your edge,_ his instinct told him. "Yeah, right," frowned Ranma as they rounded a corner. "Thinkin' about jacking that food so that none of the rest of us can have any."

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WHONK!

The sack was on the ground, and several cylindrical items rolled out of it as Genma's fist lay where it had landed—firmly on top of his impertinent son's head. "Actually, I was thinking about _YOU_, you ungrateful idiot!"

Ranma somehow found his vocal chords, though they'd been smashed thoroughly into his chest cavity. "Gh Think-in' about m-me?" His dad may have overreacted, but he supposed that was fair enough, considering that he'd taken a step into vulnerable territory admitting to his teenaged son that he was fretting on his behalf. He decided to let this one slide, so as to not insult his father's honor further. After all, even _he_ deserved some respect now and then.

Genma took a step back and pushed his glasses up onto his nose with his middle finger. "Yes. About the seijin-shiki that's coming up..."

Ranma immediately straightened himself out with an annoyed "feh" upon hearing the words and patted a hand against his thin overcoat. Okay. No honor for Genma after all. His parents had been making far too big a deal out of this thing for his understanding. He cleared his throat and continued walking, leaving the older Saotome standing on the sidewalk behind him. "That again?" he muttered under his breath. "If you ask me, that whole thing seems pretty dated." He peeked over his shoulder to savor the reaction his father would have to the bold statement, and to avoid any oncoming attacks, should the old man throw any. 

As predicted, Genma was fuming at the remark. "_Ara!_ You kids! You don't appreciate anything these days!"

Ranma continued walking, but spun on his heel to face his father. "Hey, I'm still goin', aren't I? I just think it's kinda old fashioned, all right!"

"Of course it's old fashioned! 'Old fashioned' as in 'good'!" He walked to the young man and placed a hand on his shoulder, making Ranma pause and lean away from him suspiciously. Instead of sneaking an attack on him, though, Genma just stayed with his hand on his child's shoulder, as if he were about to say somethingsincere. Though that thought only managed to make Ranma even more suspicious of what he'd do next.

Genma paused before he finally got to his point. "Ranma," he began in a thoughtful tone that made even the jaded 19-year-old prick up his ears to listen, "you're becoming a man in a few days, andwell, I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you."

Ranma's heart flip flopped. This was very unlike his dad, though, in a weird way, Ranma felt sort of honored to be receiving his praise. He brought a hand to the back of his neck and scratched nervously as he mumbled under his breath in reply. A compliment? A "thank you, dad"? He didn't really know. The young man stared shyly at the thin layer of water slicked across the sidewalk, trying to find a fitting response to what his father had said. 

As Ranma battled internally to come up with an appropriate reply bereft of any sarcasm or anxiety, Genma fought back the tears of joy and gripped his son's shoulder passionately. "Finally," the father continued in a wavering voice, "FINALLY, my sonwill be able to pick up some sake for me at the convenience store without my having to be with him."

The younger Saotome collapsed. Was that all?! He quickly scrambled to his feet and whacked a fist against his dumb old dad's head. "Gee, don't get too sentimental or anything, old man!"

"Speaking of _sake_" a mysterious voice hissed from in front of them. Both men jumped back, startled at the stranger's appearance, and shocked that they'd not heard him sneak up to them. Ranma was particularly taken off guard. He flicked his vision up and down the figure before them, noticing that he was mysteriously shrouded in a dark robe and unusually tall. This odd person must have been at least 190 centimeters in height. "Are youSaotome Genma?" the cloaked figure rasped as he raised a finger and pointed at the stout older man. 

Before Genma had realized it, he had very slowly lowered himself into a ready position. Without words, Ranma had silently ducked down into one of his own. "I am," the father responded, donning a stone face and growling in a most intimidating voice.

The cloaked figure chuckled and advanced on them a few steps. "Well..." He dramatically breathed his words with every step he took in their direction. "Isn't it fortunate that we should meet up hereof all places?" 

Genma's eyes scanned the figure in bafflement. "Have we met?" he offered, unsure of whether this character would pose a threat to him and his son, or if he was just some harmless fool.

The cloaked man stopped in his tracks. The three of them stood, bodies hardened in anticipation, two sets of eyes burning dangerously into the darkened shadow of the hood, one pair of eyes flicking calmly between the two martial artists. Suddenlywithout warningthe man with the dark coatPULLED A TINY NOTEPAD OUT OF HIS POCKET!

Ranma and Genma flinched, their bodies reacting to the stranger's sudden action, but stopped themselves abruptly when they saw that the mysterious figure had only yanked paper from the coat. They both let their muscles relax a bit, wondering exactly what this guy wanted, and why he was being so dramatic if he wasn't going to bother attacking them. They completely relaxed once the man flicked out a ballpoint pen, clicked it, and began to absentmindedly scribble on the paper. 

Ranma and Genma could do nothing but stare at the display for a few moments. They'd been sure this would turn into a fight, but instead, the guy ended up seeming more interested in stenography than landing some hits on the two other men. Finally, Ranma arose from his posture and put his hands on his hips with a raised eyebrow. "Uh does the old man owe you money or something?" 

Genma flashed his son a dirty look. "Why do you assume that, boy!"

"No," came the calm reply from the stranger as the writing continued. "He owes me something far more important than mere money." 

Ranma turned to his father with an irrefutable look of annoyance. This sounded all too familiar when your dad happened to be Saotome Genma. _"_Oyaji,_"_ he began in a deadpan voice, "just what the hell did you do this time?" 

The figure clicked on the ball point pen and tucked both items back into his robes. He looked in Ranma's direction. "'Oyaji'? You are Saotome's son, then." It was more of a statement than a question.

The pigtailed martial artist bristled at the guy's presumption and cock-sure tone of voice. "Yeah, I'm his son. Saotome Ranma. Who wants to know?" he replied severely. 

The figure took a few steps toward him and stopped when he was half a meter from his face. Ranma's eyes bulged wide at the close contact, and the figure began to hurriedly scan his body, looking him up and down with eyes that Ranma could only assume were greedily searching for some weak spot. The pigtailed boy suddenly got the strange feeling that had sometimes nervously wriggled its way into his consciousness when he was in girl form and he caught some old lecher leering at him. Too add to the insult, the robed figure unexpectedly reached thin, white fingers out from underneath his willowy sleeves and began to probe the young Saotome's musclessomething Ranma was definitely not comfortable with. The young martial artist paused for a moment before taking a few steps back and stuffing his foot up into the stranger's shrouded face. "H-hey, man, you wanna fight or what!" he threatened, animosity grappling with the tenseness in his voice.

Slowly, the hood fluttered down around Ranma's Chinese slipper. The man was, for an instant, too stunned to take into account that his face was exposed, and he stumbled back against the cement wall behind him, temporarily obscured by the shadows. Genma desperately searched the angles and swells of the mysterious man's face from what he could make out in the dim light of the street lamp, and gave a quiet gasp of realization, unheard by Ranma. The Saotome son let loose another kick, aimed at the figure's chest. 

The mystery man, upon Ranma's attack, quickly lifted the hood around his head once more and dashed to a nearby tree. _Whoa!_ Ranma thought as he watched the other man's reflexes as he snapped up several branches. _This guy ain't just some ordinary freak!_

The cloaked man landed gracefully on a high branch of a black oak tree frozen over from winter and cackled at the two fighters beneath him. His jaunty laughter caused the limbs of the tree he was sitting in to quiver the melting snow and ice down onto Ranma and Genma, however, and when he had finally finished his very obligatory bad-guy laugh, he was quite surprised when he happened to glance back down at his nemeses. 

Not only was the young man a lot smaller than he was only seconds earlier, he had miraculously sprouted breasts and looked considerably more attractive to the stranger all of a sudden. Though, the most notable change, of course, had taken place with the father, who was no longer even human, but instead, was replaced by rather large, rather dumb-looking panda. Both "men" were slicking their hands—and paws—in irritation over their wet arms as they glared up into the branches at him.

The stranger swallowed audibly. Had the Saotome father and son managed to run off and replace themselves with a young woman and a panda? Where would you find such replacements on such short notice, though? No, that couldn't have been the right conclusion. "Whawhat has just taken place here?" he asked in a hushed tone, mostly to himself. 

Ranma had managed to overhear the disbelieving query, and he succeeded a humorless chuckle as he wiped a small hand against soft, rosy lips. "Not from around here, are ya?" he ventured as he looked away in repugnance. "Everyone in Nerima knows about ourlittle problem'," he explained quietly. "But don't think for a second that it'll slow ME down!" Whipping his head back in the direction of the impudent nudnik sitting in the branches of the tree, he launched with a fist ready to pound flesh. He was stopped bluntly in mid-air when he noticed the shrouded mystery man had pulled his notepad out again and was furiously scrawling on it with the ballpoint pen. 

Ranma landed on the same branch the man was sitting on and balled his fists at his curvaceous waist. "H-HEY!" he shouted, a sharp, annoyed grate lacing itself through his female voice. "You here to do some bookkeeping or to fight, you fool?" The man didn't reply as he continued taking notes in his bulky notepad, whispering in astonishment to himself as he scribbled yet more jumbled notes and diagrams in the already crowded booklet. Ranma's face turned crimson as he noticed the design of his female form being drawn on the paper—with the proportions decidedly exaggerated by their illustrator. Without hesitation, he jutted a thin, toned leg forward and kicked the little booklet out of the man's busy hands, knocking it to the ground where it landed in a shallow puddle. 

"M-my notes!" the strange man gasped. He clenched his fists and turned a dark gaze back in Ranma's direction, seething. "How _dare_ you!"

Ranma was unimpressed. "Does this mean you'll finally fight me?" he inquired in a wooden voice.

Much to the redhead's chagrin, however, the cloaked figure managed to slide from the tree in a silent _whoosh_ and slither to the ground as if he'd been some sort of ethereal creature slipping through the air like a sliver of cloth. He crouched to the ground, his robes falling protectively around the notebook, and the white hand protruded once more to snatch the notes up and tuck them securely inside the cloak. Giving one last glance to the two martial artists, he spoke a final warning in a low growl: "You'll both pay dearly for the suffering you've caused my family Expect my vengeance soon, Saotome!" Then with ease, he leapt straight into the air, robes flapping ominously about his obscure frame, and disappeared against the blackness of the night sky.

Ranma landed from the tree with a small grunt, clenched a smooth fist, and brought it down onto his shapely hip. _"_Whotta creep," he muttered quietly. He whipped his wild scarlet hair from left to right to release some of the cold droplets that still resided there, then proceeded to muss it up with slim fingers. He turned smoothly on his heel to the slit-eyed panda standing behind him. "Oyaji," he began in a matter-of-fact tone, weighted with untapped danger. "Y'WANNA TELL ME JUST WHAT THE HELL THAT GUY IS TALKING ABOUT?" The boy-turned-girl was, in an instant, up against his father, grasping the bear's fur in his hands.

Genma made a gruff, guttural sound and quickly held up a sign in his defense. [I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA!]

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"So you're saying this strange man just_ambushed_ you on the street?" Akane asked as she plucked a sizzling slice of beef from the communal hotpot at the center of the dinner table and put it to her lips to nibble on it. She turned and watched as Ranma, who had returned to his normal male state, inattentively shoveled food into his mouth with his chopsticks.

"Uhhn," Genma nodded as he whisked a mushroom about in the shallow bowl of raw egg before him. "Ran off into the night muttering something about getting me back for something I'd done." He smiled and popped the mushroom into his mouth with a laugh and a brisk shake of his head, though he could see that his stumped act wasn't getting him very far. Ranma, Nodoka, and the Tendous had all known him long enough to know that it wasn't the nonsense he was trying to make of it, and they stared at him with suspicion written all over their faces. He cleared his throat and pushed the glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "Of course I haven't a clue what he's talking about," he mumbled finally.

Soun, Kasumi, and Nodoka looked back into their bowls of rice and began to slowly eat again, choosing to not say anything to that, no matter what they knew Genma was capable of. Anyhow, Ranma was always so good at saying what everyone had been thinking when it came to the Saotome patriarch's lies that they chose to leave those honors entirely up to the boy.

  
"Ffsh prob'ly jumped the guy's bill once, or gypped his family out of, like, an okonomiyaki cart or somethin'," Ranma predicted over the edge of his bowl, casting a reproachful glance at his father. 

  
Ranma's insults. Like clockwork, they were.

Genma warred with his son's eyes behind flickering spectacles. "You'd better watch your mouth, boy," he warned. "How do you know he's not out to get _you_ for something?" he asked as he raised an accusatory finger and pointed at a very unaffected Ranma. "He didn't directly refer to me when he said he'd get his revenge, only _A_ Saotome!" 

"He's got a point, you know," Nabiki pointed out with a small smirk, her head propped up by her hand. Ranma frowned at the two of them and let out a muffled _hmph_ as he tilted the bowl toward his face again, choosing to disregard their taunts for the moment.

"Oh, but I'm sure that can't be it!" Kasumi offered lightly as she paddled another serving of rice into Genma's bowl. She turned her attention to the young man and gave a cheerful grin. "Ranma is such a good boy, after all."

Soun piped up at the banter weaving around the family members and brought his cup of tea to his lips with a laugh. "That's right! I'm sure it'll all turn out to be Genma's fault after all! Ah hah hah hah hah hah hah!"

Akane ignored the various speculations making their rounds about the dinner table and nudged Ranma's knee with her own underneath the warm privacy of the kotatsu. "Ranma," she began, concerned curiosity poking into her voice, "do you know what he looked like?" 

Ranma slurped at a noodle and let a sardonic puff of air escape from his lips. "If I did, then we wouldn't be having this problem, would we?" he quipped between chews. "Didn't get a good look at the guy, anyway, he had that hood over his face the whole time."

The two families sat in relative silence for a few minutes, the only sounds being slurps from the men, and Nabiki drumming her fingertips on the top of the table every once in a while. It was hard to say whether or not this would develop into something serious or something ridiculous, as it was always hard to tell when it came to Genma and Ranma's problems. The hard part was the waiting, for who was to say whether this mysterious fellow was going to turn out to be another heavyweight (like Herb), or just another harmless meddler (like Tsubasa)?

After a time, some of the more impatient members of the family seemed to have had enough sitting under the weight of the silence in the room. "Well, have fun deliberating, but I have school work to get to," the middle Tendou daughter said as she arose from the flat pillow she'd been sitting on, pulling her legs out from the warmth of the blanket into the cold air of winter. 

Her younger sister peered up at her and cleared her throat. "I should probably get to my own homework as well," she agreed quietly. She placed the bowl she'd been cupping in her hand on the table with a small tap and turned one last worrisome glance to the pigtailed fiancée seated next to her. 

Ranma caught the troubled expression on the girl's face out of the corner of his eye, and immediately decided that he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of being worried over him. He placed his bowl onto the tabletop and stood suddenly. "I'm goin' out to the dojo for a while. If this jerk ends up being as tough as he's leading on, I think I want to be prepared." With that, he turned to leave the dining area, hands jammed into his pockets.

The elders and the oldest daughter sat quietly as the younger family members strode their separate ways. After a leisurely moment of tea sipping and a light cough or two from Soun, Kasumi and Nodoka got up to pursue their womanly duties in the kitchen, cleaning off the dishes from that night's dinner. That left the two fathers alone together, the tension from the rest of the family finally dissipated enough for them to talk seriously to one another about the stranger.

Soun turned a steady gaze at his old friend. There was something Genma wasn't telling him. "SoSaotome-kun," he began as he rubbed his rough fingertips around the sides of his teacup, "shall we play a game of shogi?" He figured the other man already knew what he was truly asking for. There was no need to say it outright. 

Genma knew his oldest friend well. He tipped his head down to look at the tabletop and stared intently upon its wood patterns. "Tendou-kun," he returned in a hushed voice so as to avoid arousing the suspicion of the women in the kitchen nearby, "there was something very peculiar about that stranger tonight." 

"Ohhh?" the other man asked as he lifted the cup to his lips again.

"Yes" Genma continued thoughtfully. "I saw his face but for a brief moment The boy had attacked him, knocking the hood loose, though Ranma had been too focused on the fight to notice. That was when I—" 

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The hood fluttered down around Ranma's slipper once the young martial artist had crushed his foot up into his opponent's face. The man was, for an instant, too stunned to take into account that he was exposed, and he stumbled back against the cement wall behind him, partially obscured by the shadows. Genma desperately searched the angles and swells of the mysterious man's face from what he could make out in the dim light of the street lamp, and gave a quiet gasp of realization, unheard by Ranma. 

This wasn't just some nut who had come to bother Ranma for some stupid grudge or something equally as minisculethis was one of the most formidable rivals from Genma's past returning to settle the score with the entire Saotome clan!

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"Saotome-kun! You mean you've seen the man before!" Soun cried as his eyes bulged at the confession.

"I believe so," Genma admitted, his eyebrows twitching nervously at his partial recollection. He clenched his fist and gnashed his teeth. If only he could remember _who_ that man had been—!

The longhaired man quirked an eyebrow at him and leaned forward in puzzlement. "Youbelieve so'? You mean you don't remember the face of one of the most fearful adversaries of your past?" 

Genma lifted a thick hand behind his head and let out a robust laugh. "WA HAH HAH HAH! It's the damnedest thing, isn't it!"

Soun didn't look quite so amused. He clutched his teacup in both hands and frowned fretfully at the stout man while he guffawed idiotically. "But Saotome, shouldn't you tell Ranma-kun? This fellow's rivalry is apparently going to involve you both."

Genma sobered immediately and tilted his head back haughtily. "The path of a martial artist is a challenging one to walk, Tendou-kun. Ranma has trained since his boyhood for such tribulations, and his endurance must be tested. Whatsoever this man's grievance be with the Saotome-ryuu, it is Ranma's duty as a martial artist to meet the challenge head-on and protect his family's honor. Oh, a father's love is as deep as the sea, but can be just as cruel!" 

""

""

" You don't want to tell him, do you."

"The boy kicks really hard when he's mad, Tendou."

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Out in the dojo, the strikes on a punching bag could be heard, accompanied by the concentrated grunts of a man in his prime. The faint silvery light of the moon, which poured into the hallowed academy by way of the open shoji panels, outlined his long, lean muscles as he grunted and threw kicks and punches at the synthetic opponent standing before him. Whether or not his assistance would be needed once the strange hooded man showed up again to challenge his father, Ranma wanted to make sure he'd be more than ready. 

If Ranma had ever prided himself in anything, it had to have been his readiness whenever a challenge reared its ugly head. This much, he was sure of.


	2. Chapter 2

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

CHAPTER #2

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Akane was bent over the sink, staring intently into the mirror as her hand vigorously pumped the toothbrush over her teeth. She might have been applying more pressure to her poor gums than was really healthy, but she was struggling to stay awake as it was, so at the very least, she saw the dull pain she was inflicting upon herself as a way to keep conscious. She had studied until four in the morning for a test she was going to have in her literature class today, and she had been surprised to wake up to find that she was sprawled out on her desk with her hand sandwiched in between the pages of her book, keeping her place. She had awakened twenty minutes after she'd wanted to, and was in a mad dash to get to the college before her class started—not to mention ended.

__

"Hey, tomboy," Ranma casually greeted as he walked into the bathroom with his shallow bucket of supplies. He noted the exhausted glaze of her eyes when she shot him a dirty look. He inwardly snickered and reached for his own toothbrush as he placed his goods on the counter. _"_Man! You look like hell," he announced a little more lightly than she appreciated. He was sure that that would get a rise out of her, which was exactly what he'd wanted; it was always what he wanted. As he squeezed a small ball of toothpaste out onto the frayed bristles of his old toothbrush, he ducked indifferently underneath one of Akane's roundhouse kicks.

She turned to spit the foam from her mouth into the sink, and then spun back to him with a thin line of white lather tracing the edge of her mouth. "Shut up, Ranma!" she barked. 

"Oh, relax" he said, bringing the toothbrush to his mouth and beginning to scrub. His eyes locked on her, and searched her for an explanation as he brushed. She stared back, understanding the question his stare seemed to imply. She straightened her back and smoothed her hands over her hair as she let loose a weary sigh, with more than a hint of annoyance edging her voice. "I overslept fell asleep at my desk again last night."

He leaned against the counter and closed his eyes. "Fssh. All that shtudying... I dun' shee how you cn' shtand it," he mused through the sloshes of his toothbrush. 

She too leaned against the counter and stared across the room for just a moment. It was slightly unusual for her to be attending college, and she knew it. But all the same, after high school, with the thought of her studies coming to an end and marrying Ranma being her only option from then on, she suddenly developed an interest in continuing her education. While she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself, somewhere in the back of her mind gnawed the memory of the failed wedding attempt when they were both sixteen. She certainly hadn't wanted to be faced with that same embarrassment again, and so had decided that college would be a good diversion from the prospect of married lifeat least for a little while. 

Liberal-minded Tendou hadn't been bothered by the fact that his daughter had wanted to continue her education, but he certainly hadn't been the one to suggest it, either. He had, of course, questioned why she'd want to do such a thing when she had wifely duties to be thinking about. Once she'd pointed out that she wasn't married just yet, he'd answered in typical Tendou-otousan complaisant fashion: "Well, I suppose that's true"

__

"Ptoo!" came the sound of Ranma spitting the toothpaste into the sink. He turned to the motionless Akane and gently tapped her on the nose, bumping her out of her reverie_. _"Hey." 

She turned her head and looked at him, eyes round, tired, and a little startled. He wiped his mouth with a hand towel, smiled, and then tossed it over his shoulder. "You really are out of it," he said, unable to hide the genuine amusement in his grin. He'd not tried so hard to fight it actually, though he was a little self-conscious about the amount of sympathy he'd let slip into his voice just then. When he thought about it, he quickly jerked the corners of his mouth into a sedated version of his earlier smile, and then, finally, muted it completely.

She stared. Ranma returned her gaze with a steady one of his own. For a brief moment, they both felt something indescribable moving between them; a strange feeling that was hard to decipher, but not impossible to accept on its own terms. It was an odd emotion, though to be sure, it was hardly negative. It could, in fact, only be described as something very fitting. Something almostcomfortable. 

All too quickly, they realized how long they'd been staring at each other, and looked away simultaneously, afraid perhaps that they were reading too much into one another's actions. With a slight pause, they hesitated to speak or move, for fear of breaking not only the strange emotion they shared, but also their own egos. Ranma was first to vocalize his embarrassment as he turned back to the sink and twisted the knobs on. "Go to class already," he mumbled at last.

"Wh...a? Class!" she suddenly remembered with a gasp. She darted from the bathroom immediately, remembering that she still had to get into her school clothes, and that catching the bus to the school downtown took almost thirty minutes, not to mention the walk to the campus, which would take up to ten minutes (and that was if she was lucky), and she had to get some food into her stomach first, of course, because what's a test if you've not had breakfast, all the while she had to do this, and had to make sure of that

Ranma bent over the sink and listened to the girl tear down the hallway. He didn't bother to hide his grin this time as he laughed to himself in the solitude of the empty bathroom. "Dummy," he muttered ineffectually under his breath as he dipped his hands under the faucet and began to wash his face with the hot water. She'd been no more punctual a person when they'd been in high school. It seemed to him that the girl must've been slightly masochistic for volunteering to put herself through more of the same monotony they'd experienced at Furinkan. He figured he'd never know why anyone would choose a life of insomnia and tests over the exciting, fast-paced life of a martial artist. _Maybe she'd actually land one of those kicks every once in a while if she spent more of her time training instead of studying herself to exhaustion,_ he thought, suddenly feeling very annoyed with academic institutions.

What had that weird feeling been just now between them, though? The girl had looked so exhausted and stressed, and he'd not been able to suppress the tender thump of his heart at the sight of her feeling so out of sorts. He decided that he had pitied her just then. Pitied her for losing sleep, pitied her for having to deal with those dictatorial professors and their stupid tests Maybe that's what the feeling had been. Pity. He hoped somewhere deep inside himself that she had noticed his friendly concern and appreciated it. 

He screwed at the knobs again, and thoughtfully propped himself over the sink, pressing his palms onto the cool marble of the bathroom counter. _Friendly concern'_, he thought again. He chuckled mockingly despite himself and shook his head. _I'm an idiot._

There was tension between them, he knew that much for sure. But then again, there had always been tension. The only change he could really pinpoint at this moment in time was that, between insults and arguments, he felt like being nicer to her these days. Had four years of living under the same roof, getting to know one another, and vehemently denying their feelings only worked itself up to "friendly concern"? What a moronic concept. It had to be more than that. That feeling couldn't have just been pity.

He entered the bathing room sliding the glass door behind him, and walked to the tub to fill it up. He cleared his throat and blushed at his next thought: maybe the reason they felt so awkward had something to do with that kiss they'd shared. The first one, anyway

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was one of those still, quiet days between the seasons of autumn and winter, when the red leaves on the trees were beginning to brown in response to the rapidly chilling air. The sky was a muted gray, almost white, and not a cloud existed to stir the skies into making a single sound. The streets of Nerima were almost equally as motionless, and every once in a while, when one of the dogs in the neighborhood would bark, it would just as quickly stop, almost as if it were embarrassed at how loud its own voice was. 

Akane had managed to become bored enough with her studying that she'd decided to swallow her pride and ask Ranma if he'd like to spar with her, to shake the stillness of the day a bit. The boy had been in the midst of reading a manga, and had already gotten his practice in that morning, but the request had seemed sincere enough that he'd agreed to it—with much sighing, and rolling his eyes, and complaining about how he'd already been doing something, of course. After several minutes of frivolous arguing, they retreated to the backyard to train, or, more accurately, for Ranma to stand in front of Akane, refusing to do anything more than dodge when she threw a kick or punch.

She huffed, and tossed another kick in his direction, the dead grass hissing under her bare feet as little clouds of steam emanated from her lips. He leapt back, his face unimpressed, then bent forward to flick a finger nonchalantly against her nose. "So how's school, kiddo?"

The shorthaired young woman arose from her defensive position and gave him an annoyed look. "Okay, what gives," she said, panting through gulps of cold air, "why won't you take me seriously, Ranma?"

He furrowed thick eyebrows at her and looked away with a light shrug. It had been such a slow day, he felt like stirring up the pot a little, and he suddenly found himself rather determined to annoy the girl. "I told you, I was already doin' something. I'm only out here as a favor," he replied in the most uninterested voice he could muster.

She studied him for a moment and chewed the inside of her cheek before waving a lithe hand across her bangs and turning to walk away. "Never mind then," she retorted, effectively keeping her voice as cool as the air surrounding them. "It'd be just as well if I practiced on a training dummy with you standing around like that." She was onto his little game, of course; after all, he had been playing it for three years. It had taken her a while, but she had only recently realized that he secretly reveled in the angry, passionate reactions to his taunts she was so famous for doling out. If she had reacted in her traditional manner, with the mallets and the low earth orbit punches and the screaming and shouting, she would only get so far with the obstinate boy. She had begun to find, however, that returning his detached insults with some of her own really got to him, and would steer an argument in her favor much quicker than physical force alone. It had become one of their newer routines with each other, and Akane somewhat unconsciously relished in the new spin on their flirtatious dance of wills. 

He turned with a sarcastic "_fssh"_ and began walking towards the house. Once again, she hadn't taken his bait—how disappointing. When had she decided to stop being so violent, anyway? That dumb girl

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he couldn't ignore the fact that he hadn't really been having much fun reading his manga, though. In fact, Akane showing up and asking for a sparring session had been a welcome release from the aggravating inertia of the afternoon. As he neared the flat, broad steps leading up to the dojo, he battled internally over whether he should swallow his pride, turn back, and help her train, or let her practice by herself while he returned to his room to carry on his arduous task of being bored. His father and Tendou-ojiisan had gone to one of their old friends' houses for the day, and Nabiki and Kasumi were both off in the enormous estate doing their own thing. He wondered if he should watch television, but he felt listless just thinking about it. Doing what Akane wanted—ooh, that stubborn tomboy!—seemed to be his only option at the moment. He peered over his shoulder in the direction of her retreating form. _Damn it, Akane_, he thought. "Hey"

At his call, she turned to him with arched eyebrows, still very much playing her aloof role. This irritated him, because he knew that that was what she was doing, but he walked to her anyway with hands clasped behind his back. She watched as he approached her, and blinked innocently when he finally stopped staring at the ground and looked up at her. "If you're sure you can handle me," he mumbled, averting his eyes from the deliberately cute expression of her face as quickly as he saw it.

She smiled. "So! Does this mean you'll promise to fight without holding back?" 

He flushed, but continued looking away from her. "Don't push your luck," he returned. "It ain't right to hit girls, even if it is just training." He peered at her out of the corner of his eye. Hell, it was worth another shot: "...even if it's a macho tomboy, for that matter." 

Her eyes narrowed. She wheeled around to go to the storage shed, fighting those old urges to bash him in the face upon hearing the familiar slur. "Fine! Training dummy it is, then, you _JERK_."

__

Damn, he thought, _that one didn't work either._ He reached forward and grasped the girl's small wrist in his hand. "Jeez, I was only kidding," he admitted flatly, hating himself for being desperate enough to even consider training with a girl—let alone this girl. "Come onI know you're bored," he continued. He blushed despite himself at the admittedly cheap effort of trying to make it seem like he was doing her some grand favor by taking the ennui of the afternoon off her hands. Akane recognized the transfer of responsibility trick he was attempting, but decided to ignore it. If anyone had been bored, after all, it had been _him_.

She turned around again and studied the sincerity of his features. Perhaps he wasn't going to treat her like some child, and would really train with her this time. She reached a hand down to her belt and gave it a tug. His blue eyes looked brighter in the haze of the frigid afternoon, and he backed away from her several steps, releasing her arm. She was suddenly very aware of how warm his hand had been against her skin, and, for a brief second, almost forgot about their spar. When he crouched into a fighting posture, however, he suddenly reminded her of their arrangement. With pursed lips, she crouched into her own posture and walked several steps in his direction.

He didn't move, instead only waited for her. Once she was within about a leg's distance, she stopped and feigned left, only to dash back with a kick intended for his neck. He blocked it with his wrist and struck a foot out intended for her ankle. He slid his callused foot against the dry, crunchy blades of grass, making them pop and snap under the speed of his attack, and was surprised when he made a connection. It was too early in the fight for Akane to be getting hit, he thought. Her mind must've not been clear.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth and hopped back on her good foot as his thick man's toenail managed to make a small cut in the soft woman's skin of her ankle. Once she'd regained her composure, she jumped forward, flailing punches to his head. He managed to block most of them, but her last one had been completely unexpected, and managed to sock him in the collarbone. He did a good job of not showing how much it'd hurt, but he'd figured he had only let it slip by so that she wouldn't feel so bad about getting her ankle kicked earlier. Yes. That had to be it

It went on like this for some time, their grunts and sharp _HYAH's_ piercing the silent chill around them. But as their fight wore on, Ranma began to notice to his dismay just how rusty Akane had gotten. Despite the punch she'd managed to land early on in their spar, she'd only managed to get in one or two other hits since, while he was doing a pretty good job landing his attacks (though he was still holding back considerably from using full power). Then again, maybe it wasn't so much of a case of her getting worse as it was a case of his getting better. After all, now that he'd graduated high school, he could devote all his time to developing his skills, while she well, she still had classes to worry about. She continued to train as much as she had when they were in high school, but with his surplus of time, he must have developed beyond the level that he'd been when he was younger, which was something he hadn't even thought was possible. 

While reflecting, he managed to throw a punch that Akane had been too slow to deflect. She was hit in the shoulder and knocked backwards, letting loose a tiny squeak of pain. Ranma gulped and froze as he stared down at the precious body lying splayed out before him. He gazed down at his offending fist, as if it were some sort of criminal, and then swiftly tucked it behind his back. "A-Akane" he stuttered, ashamed, and stood up straight. "I reallythink we should stop."

She smiled despite the aching that washed over her body and forced herself to her feet, standing on wobbly legs. "What's ththe matter?" she asked, trying to sound bold. "You t-tired?"

He frowned. That was it. He was through fighting her. "No!" he answered defiantly, insulted by the accusation. "Look at you," he continued with an obscure mixture of disgust and sympathy, "this isn't an even match." He'd not intended for it to come out as arrogant-sounding as it did. Indeed, his aim had been concern. But he realized all too quickly how the girl had taken it once he caught the hot expression on her face.

__

That overconfident little—! she raged to herself._ How dare he assume me so weak!_ New techniques be damned, she couldn't accept this blow to her martial artist's pride, no matter how cool a front she had originally wanted to keep while in his presence. She returned shakily to her defensive stance, her eyes burning into Ranma's with a steady heat. To complete the image of her unwavering toughness, she turned the corners of her mouth up into a little smirk. "Then how bout you ffight me until we _ARE _evenly matched!"

His arms remained at his sides. "Akane, don't be—"

"—SHAAH!" She let out a yell and flattened her hand into a bokken fist. She'd been slowed down considerably from the fight up to that point, but she still managed to leap forward at an impressive enough speed to bring the fist down upon his neck. 

The thrust never made the connection, unfortunately, abruptly shattering what had been left of her ego. He flicked his hand up just in time to grab her wrist, and frowned when she tried with her other hand, throwing a punch at him from the other side with an equally fearsome velocity. He caught the second punch in mid-throw and held her fast, her slender wrists wriggling futilely in his rough, yellow palms. "HEY! Now, _look!_ You know I don't like fightin' girls, an' I only did this because you asked me to!"

Akane groused as she tried to twist her hands from his. So now he was trying to humiliate her? "Oh, no you don't, Ranma" she growled through clenched teeth. After a pause and a few moments of ineffective yanking, she turned her fiery gaze up to him. "—not when you're finally treating me like an _equal!_"

His eyebrow arched at the remark. "What? Equal'?"

"If you think that I'm going to back down after three years of waiting for you to get off your damned high horse and fight me on even terms, you're seriously mistaken!" she finished in a furious, shaky voice. He stared at her dumbly, apparently trying to figure through the information he'd just received, but his grip remained vice-like, and she decided with a burst of adrenaline that while he was thinking, she should take advantage of the opening. Without taking her surroundings into account, she lifted a foot, plopped it firmly in the center of his chest, and jerked her whole body backwards. It ended up working, as she was suddenly able to snap her wrists from his grasp, but in her efforts, she had forgotten about the ice cold koi pond located behind her. Just as quickly as she'd begun to congratulate herself on her small victory and regain some of her self-esteem, she felt her heel collide with a sharp rock behind her, and the next thing she knew, her back smacked against water, submerging her in bitter iciness. 

"WHAAAAAA!" she screamed as she flailed her arms about in the freezing pool. The poor koi swam frantically away from the intruder. Her panic consumed her for a very crucial instant, and she ended up swallowing a copious amount of the water, which terrified the wits from her, since it only reminded her of her inability to swim. "RMA!"

"Akane!" Ranma shouted as he dashed forward and grasped her hands by the edge of the pond. With a grunt, he hauled the dripping girl from the water, and yanked her to her unsteady feet. He clasped her arms tightly to her sides to hold her upright. It seemed to him as if she'd shrunk in the cold water, because she suddenly seemed much smaller somehow. "Akane!" he repeated as he clung to her shivering form. 

She stood for a moment, hacking, sobbing, and generally trying to convince herself that she hadn't just been on the brink of death. Finally, after she had gotten her fit under control, she tilted her head down and stared in distress at the ground. After a period, her eyes feebly traveled upward to find the face of her fiancée.

He paused, studying her pale cheeks and quivering lower lip. He gave her a commiserating look, and slowly removed his hands from her sides. With that, he turned on his heel and walked into the house, leaving a soaking, bewildered Akane in his wake. 

She blinked and watched the boy pace away, her heart sinking slightly from disappointment. Just where did he think he was going? Did he feel guilty enough about her falling into the pond that he had suddenly decided to run off? She rolled her eyes at the thought as a frustrated puff released itself in a little cloud of steam from wet, pink lips. _Afraid to face the un-cute tomboy's wrath, aren't you?_ the girl thought numbly, as her eyebrows dented into a light frown. "Jerk," she muttered miserably, and lifted a shivering arm to wipe a drop that was trickling slowly down her temple. She figured she might as well get into the house before she caught her death of cold. Her wet feet padded across the brown lawn, crunching with each step, and she smoothed her hands over her dripping hair as glinting droplets of ice water fell from the heavy strands. She winced at the new pain in her ankle as she trudged along the dry grass. She figured she must've twisted it when she tripped into the pool. Well, she wasn't known for being the most graceful of people, after all. _No wonder that dummy's always making fun of me._

Suddenly, Ranma once again appeared in front of her. She looked up, slightly startled, having not expected for him to return. He held in his arms a colorful fleece blanket from the Tendou sitting room, which he promptly unraveled before her. He looked into the confused girl's doe brown eyes and flapped the quilt out with a sigh. He whirled the blanket around her shoulders, clasping it together at her front. "You idiot," he softly scolded as he languidly pulled her into his arms and began rubbing her back and sides with his hands to warm her up. "You'd better be thankful you're not equal to me, else you'd be somethin' completely different right now." 

She frowned at his overemphasis of the word "not", but kept quiet out of her own chilliness, and perhaps out of shock. She couldn't quite place if he'd meant it as one of his semi-affectionate insults to her, though the tone of his voice had sounded so unusually kindhearted She would never have been able to recognize it as something even minutely insulting.

Akane marveled at how quickly it had taken a simple sparring session to turn into being hugged by Ranma. First, they'd had one of their typical, non-combative arguments, then they'd actually had a serious spar for one of the first times in their relationship, she'd fallen into cold water, and now he held her against him, as if they were actual lovers who were used to such cuddly displays. She closed her eyes and rested her head against his warm chest while she held the blanket closed in front of her and enjoyed the luxurious heat his rough hands provided. Nice as it was, she wasn't sure how much of her longing she should let show. She settled on sighing gratefully, suddenly euphoric at the thought that he'd come back to offer her the blanket and his warmth. She at once felt a lot better, and certainly a lot less cold. "Ranma" 

Ranma paused when he felt her soft shoulders press against his front and heard her contented sigh as it flowed in a warm little burst against his chest. He knew that what he was doing was a nice gesture and all, but he hadn't expected for her to sound so happy from it. He swallowed violently to alleviate a tightness that was taking hold of his throat. _Oh, God. What do I do now?_ his addled mind squeaked. He could do nothing but hold her for a moment, unsure of what his next move was to be. His large hands traced uneasily along her sides and rested lamely upon the curve of her waist, until he was able to calm down enough to convince himself to follow her silent example and enjoy their closeness. After a time, he shyly reached the length of his arms around her and pulled her into a timid embrace, bringing the contact into something vastly more intimate, and arousing an excited flurry in both their stomachs.

They stood like that for an indefinite amount of time, before she stepped back shyly and they stared at the ground in between them in silence. Were things moving too fast? Then again, how slowly should things move? It had been three years, after all.

The shorthaired young woman looked up at him with parted lips, as the chilly silence of Nerima whooshed about them. "Ranma" she whispered."Ththanks." She turned her head down again, feeling bashful just looking at him.

He mumbled a reply, though it wasn't anything coherent, and quickly stuffed his hands into his pockets. He was thankful that a cold wind kicked up just then, as he could have easily blamed the stark redness in his cheeks on wind burn; he wasn't quite ready to admit that they'd become the brilliant shade on their own. He looked up at her, eager to get their minds off of the hug they'd just shared—he couldn't yet tell if the connection had been awkward or something that they both had needed. "Um are you you're not hurt from you know, from earlier." He waved his index finger gingerly at the shoulder he'd hit. 

She shook her head, a little surprised at the question, though more surprised at how bumbling he'd sounded just then. "No," she affirmed with a small smile. It was a lie; she was sore in several places, though mainly on her ankle, which hadn't been his fault anyway. _I was a fool to think I was any match for him,_ she thought ruefully.

He swallowed and steeled himself for vulnerability. "Akane," he said finally. "Don't ever ask me to spar with you again." He paused for her reaction, and was surprised to find that she didn't have one. He finished his entreaty in a whisper. "Okay?"

She gave a light nod of consent, though she was taken aback by the request. Torn between being offended by his assumed superiority and touched by his concern, she quickly pushed any feelings of uncertainty away, unable to form any sort of conclusion from anything at the moment. She had been bombarded by too many emotions, by too many events, and too many questions for what was only supposed to be a simple training session. "We should probably go inside," she said hastily, still unsure of what had just happened between them. He immediately agreed and they turned and followed the path away from the low, flat steps of the dojo.

Her hunched form slowly shuffled up the stairs to the house on hobbling legs. She felt her knee give out momentarily from the pain shooting through her heel, and her body took a woozy dip that almost landed her on the wooden planks of the hallway. She felt the familiar support of Ranma's strong arm as it wrapped around her abdomen to hold her upright from behind. 

Akane turned about, startled, and caught a look from him that seemed both frightened and longing at the same time. "Akane," he breathed, "I'm sorry, I, um" He immediately unwound his arm from her waist and backed away, believing that she'd do what she normally did when he made unsolicited contact with her and punt him into the sky. For all the luck he'd had earlier in the day, touching her in such a fresh way was something he was sure Akane would take exception to.

She instead turned to him, her hair still weighed down from the wetness of the pond, bronze eyes sparkling with intrigue. "What is it_?" B-bump_

He blinked at her, then raised a hand to his head and rubbed his fingers through his hair. She hadn't malleted him, or whacked him into the stratosphere. It was progress. "I just I, I was trying to keep you from falling, that's all." _Thump_

She wetted her lips with her tongue. After a lengthy and uncertain pause, she gathered her nerve and willed the yearning they'd felt when they hugged to manifest itself again. 

Slowly, she took a clumsy step forward on her bruised ankle. She felt, tentatively enough, that if she were to let the emotion of the afternoon slip from her grasp, she would never be able to show Ranma how she felt about him as perfectly as she could now. She leaned towards the surprised boy and pressed her lips softly against his. Her body was numb, and her mind terrified, as she begged God to let her know for sure that this was what he wanted, too. 

At first, it seemed as if they were only hovering against one another's lips. It didn't feel like what he'd consider a kiss, though the new touch alone was exciting in and of itself. He slowly pushed back once he felt sure that she wasn't doing it out of pity, or out of some strange sense of possession over him (if anything, he'd learned to be wary of the things girls do when they feel entitled to something). He felt ecstasy overtake him when the thought occurred to him that this might be an earnest gesture of Akane's love. He felt scared when something else told him that this was to be the death of his indifferent demeanor around her, as well. How could it be that kissing the girl he'd desired for three years made him feel so helpless, while at the same time, so powerful?

What was soft and chaste quickly became intense and needing. Had they known something as simple and innocent as a small kiss would arouse such passion and such a love-starved hunger, they might have hesitated a bit more, but it was blatantly obvious to them at that point that they'd have gone through with it all the same. His hands moved to cup firmly against her back while hers found their station grasping gently at his shoulders. 

As she stood two steps above him, they willed the hush of Nerima to envelop them enough to get through their first kiss together without any interruptions from jealous or nosy meddlers; to have the moment only for themselves. A lone foghorn from a distant steamboat crooned softly along the canal as the heirs to the Masubetsu Kakuto let all of the tensions, all of the questions, and all of the anxieties of three years slip through one another's lips.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ranma opened his eyes as the steam from the furo curled about his face. All that had happened almost a year ago. He thought she'd gotten over it by now, and that they would start being open about their feelings to one another, but apparently, as that morning had proven to him, they were still too shy to progress very far beyond affectionate bickering and wistful gazes.

They'd avoided looking at one another for several days after they'd kissed that day, ironically terrified of how their newfound intimacy would impact their relationship. Still, ever so gently, they had moved back into their old comfortable roles with one another. He'd returned to teasing her and taunting her and becoming strangely aroused when she reciprocated or tried to smack him for his insolence. She'd returned to making offhand comments to make him jealous or angry, or splashing water on him when she felt like insulting the masculine front he tried so ridiculously hard to uphold. 

But the nice things they did for one another were also amplified, as well. She didn't force her cooking on him as much, though she still tried just as hard to cook food she thought he'd like (she'd even gone so far as to actually _try_ the food before propositioning him). He'd been in several fights, and she had stayed next to his futon for the duration of the healing process and made real efforts to make him feel comfortable, even going so far as holding his hand and lying down next to him once. As for him, he, surprisingly, made more efforts to touch her than he once had. He'd jumped in front of her to get her out of harm's way just as often as he ever had, but he'd hold her closer during those moments when she wasn't in trouble. He'd even worked up the courage to hug her a few times before they went to bed at night—which they still did in separate rooms, of course.

Since then, they'd kissed twice more. Both times had been stimulating in their own ways, but had seemed more hurried when compared to their first time (suspicious parents and siblings to worry about, you know) which had come so naturally, and with such an exciting whirl of different feelings.

He felt a distant yearning in the pit of his stomach when he realized that he wasn't running alongside her every morning to school anymore. Maybe he should enroll at the college also? 

He felt around the slick porcelain surface of the tub with his big toe and flicked the rubber stopper out of the drain. As he arose from the water, he grabbed a towel from a wooden rack standing next to the furo and tugged the rough material across his back. _Your girl side's startin' to make you think about weird stuff, _his machismo rebuked him._ I can't spend all morning thinkin' about this. I've got trainin' to do._

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"I'm home!" Akane cried as she entered the foyer of her house. She was greeted by the muffled "welcome back" by her older sister somewhere in the back halls of the house. The young girl tapped her heels against the floor, causing her shoes to wiggle loose enough for her to kick them off into one of the little cubbyholes near the door. As she dropped her flat book bag onto the raised floor of the home and stepped up upon the shiny wooden floor, she glanced about with intent. She clucked her tongue against the back of her teeth and held her arm low to the ground as her eyes searched the scene purposefully. "P-Chan!" she called in a high voice. "Ttk, ttk, ttk, ttk, ttk, ttk, ttk! P-Chaaaan!" 

Her return home was never complete without her favorite pet rushing into her arms to greet her. It was something she'd come to expect, and had become something of a welcoming routine she'd grown very fond of, for sentimental reasons, of course. The small thump of an animal as he plopped from his seat in the back of the sitting room was heard, and the excited click of his tiny feet against the hardwood floors rang out as the little black figure ran to the entrance to meet his beloved mistress. Akane turned to the source of the sound and grinned as she knelt and held her arms wide for her small, plump pet to jump into.

P-Chan gratefully hopped up into the girl's thin, soft arms and stuck out his flat, pink tongue to kiss her, his cold, wet doggie's nose pressing against her warm cheek and making her giggle. "Hi, P-Chan," she greeted affectionately as she snuggled the stubby black figure of her pet pug while he kicked his legs excitedly and licked her face. He let loose an eager yip amid her soft, feminine laughter.

Kasumi padded from the sitting room into the entrance of their home while carrying a small pincushion and several slippery yards of fabric. She eyed the girl with a hint of displeasure. "Akane-chan, you're thirty minutes late," she admonished softly as she watched her younger sister cavort on the floor with the small, hyperactive dog.

Akane's sugary, laughing eyes went up to greet her sister's face. She gently placed her pet on the floor and rubbed at the stickiness on her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater. "I'm sorry," she said with a small bow of her shoulders and a shallow giggle. "My professor needed to talk to me about one of the assignments I turned in. He said it was good, so he wanted to publish it in the college gazette." 

Kasumi's lips curved upward into a gentle smile as she looked proudly down upon her little sister. Though she'd told her sister to return home so that they could get started and finish their project early, she found that it'd be impossible to scold the girl when she had only been late because she'd been receiving the honor of a teacher. "Oh, congratulations! That's wonderful news," she said, her voice suddenly buoyant with enthusiasm. She reached to her wrist and lifted the cloth draped over it with raised eyebrows. "You'll tell me about it, won't you?" she asked cheerily, gesturing to the fabric, and all that it suggested. 

"Mm!" Akane agreed with a nod of her head. As she stood and followed her sister to her room upstairs, the small dog about her feet yapped and wove ecstatically between her heels, giving a playful nip every once in a while. The girls chatted back and forth easily, with high breaths and light chuckles characteristic of their devoted sisterhood, as the little black pug followed them into Kasumi's room.

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"I hadn't ever considered that before, but you're right," Kasumi noted as she busily snipped the satiny fabric along a dotted chalk line, making absolutely sure that each cut was perfectly aligned. " Mishima's work does have undertones of passion and death being connected in some way. And it's mostly in the Sea of Fertility', you said?"

"Uhhn. Nakajima-sensei said that it would be showing up in the student reflections' column sometime in the next two weeks," Akane replied as she sat cross-legged across from her older sister and watched her hands slip over the cloth. P-Chan had nestled himself into Akane's lap and was lounging lazily over one of her calves as he too watched the glinting scissors make their way through the fabric that would be fashioned into Akane's seijin-shiki kimono.

"We'll have to make sure to get a copy, then," Kasumi lightly returned as she readjusted one of her previous measurements and trimmed some of the frayed bits of the fabric away. 

"Kasumi-oneechan, this material is really beautiful," Akane cooed as she reached a hand forward and ran a fingertip over the cool silk, listening as it made a small _ssshh_ noise. It was a lovely shade of pale green; Akane immediately recognized it as one of her favorite colors from her childhood. "I thought we had decided on red, though," she remembered suddenly as she peeked up at her big sister.

Her older sister turned her face upward to meet hers and suddenly gave a small, apologetic smile. "Well, I did try to get red, but it is a very popular color for this ceremony. The store was all out of the nicest shades," she explained as she stretched out another piece of fabric and began her deliberate cutting. 

Akane watched her sister's tapered, womanish hands work in silence. She was slightly disappointed that she wouldn't be wearing the bright, lively color she had originally intended—she had secretly wanted Ranma to notice on the day of the ceremony how nice she looked in his favorite color, as well—though something deep inside of her felt a little relieved that she wouldn't be wearing anything more gaudy than she was used to wearing. After all, this light meadow green was a color she'd always been very fond of, and despite her name meaning "deep red", the light green certainly reflected the person that she was and the soft, watery colors she liked to wear. She wiggled her toes, suddenly feeling lighthearted.

P-Chan panted gently in her lap and groaned lightly as he let loose a small yawn. She turned her attention to him for a moment, and promptly let the sound of her sister's methodical snipping lull her into a blissful, calm state of mind. She reached down and scratched the half-comatose dog's head. P-Chan was adorable, and, though she had certainly missed her first P-Chan, she'd never forget how grateful she'd been when this little one had wandered into her life.

Well, he hadn't so much wandered as he'd been brought by Ranma himself into her heart. She frowned momentarily as she recalled how much the young man had hated her little piglet, but felt her resentment fizzle when she just as quickly remembered the irony of his presenting her a second P-Chan. She had never understood what had moved him to even bother to replace an animal he had so disliked in the first place

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Akane shuffled the shoji panel out of her way and stared out miserably over the garden behind her home. She stood there a moment, peering blankly at the dark grass stretched out ahead, and listening to the blotchy, muddled sounds coming from the TV in the sitting room behind her. A roll of thunder lightly shuddered the floor beneath her and she responded to its call by peering upwards into the dusky gray sky. _Rain_, she thought as a few heavy droplets fell from overhead and splattered thickly to the mud of the yard. She felt the worry bubble up inside of her at the sight of them. It had been almost ten months since she'd seen her little pet pig, P-Chan, and the abundant rains that had been surging their way through Tokyo had done nothing to put her mind at ease about his absence. 

The creature had never had an easy time returning to her for some odd reason, but whenever rain had been in the forecast, she had made it a point to leave the sliding doors of the west wing of the house open so that he could make his way in to her. He'd always seem to make an appearance on nights that there was rain; perhaps because he was homeless and just wanted a warm bed to sleep in during storms, or perhaps because he had a home somewhere else and would get shut out on nights when the weather had turned bad. She didn't really know. Either way, it had become a conditioned response for her to expect the piglet on the nights when showers wept from the sky and the stormy weather encouraged the sweet little animal into her embrace. A conditioned response that had, for many months at least, been failing her.

Ranma and Nabiki, who had been making their way through the dark hall as quietly as they could, paused to watch the young girl with interest. Ranma stared curiously at his fiancée as his prospective sister in law fidgeted at his side, shuffling crumpled yen bills into her wallet, and all of a sudden seeming very determined to appear indifferent. Akane turned from where she had been staring into the bleak night sky and looked inquiringly at her sister and her betrothed, who had apparently appeared out of nowhere. She felt like opening her mouth to greet them, but something about the way they were standing, looking as if they had an important mission, rendered her unable to speak. What was Ranma doing clamping his hands so tightly behind his back like that?

"Hi," the boy offered after a time, prompting Nabiki to stop jumbling around in her billfold long enough to see that her little sister was gaping at them. 

The middle Tendou daughter gave the younger girl a small smile, and fought a chuckle seeing the confused, drawn expression on her sister's face. As far as Nabiki was concerned, Akane had always had a way of making too big a deal out of things. _No matter,_ she thought airily, _she won't have any reason to look that way after we give her this._ The elder sibling walked to the young girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Akane-chan," she greeted as she nodded her head in the direction of the open shoji, "you're leaving this open again?"

Akane peered dumbly out into the garden. The light-hearted tone of Nabiki's voice at once made her feel foolish. "H-he might come tonight," she answered quietly. 

Ranma swallowed and tightened his jaw upon hearing the girl's words. _Stupid Ryouga!_ he thought bitterly. Did Akane really miss that idiot so much? He, as always, found himself torn between being angry at the other boy for lying to his fiancée, and angry at Akane for being too damned innocent to see the truth about "P-Chan" and all of his sick perversions. The drowsy puppy he had hidden behind his back wiggled a bit under the sudden tension of his hands. 

"Ahh. I think you're deluding yourself," Nabiki observed in a soft voice, though Akane couldn't ignore the harsh truth behind the words. "That pig's long gone."

"How do you know that?" Akane asked defensively, breaking eye contact with the older girl. It was a shame that Nabiki was so perceptive, otherwise Akane could have gone the rest of her life thinking that P-Chan would return to her. But now that she had the confirmation of her older sister, how could she go about deceiving herself into believing he'd be coming back?

"I don't. Not for sure, anyway. But then again, when is anyone ever sure about anything?" Nabiki asked casually as she gestured to Ranma to join them. He dutifully stepped forward from the cool shadows and into the light pouring out from the sitting room, not uttering a word. 

Akane looked at him silently, the pain of reality still lingering on her moonlike face. He subdued a sudden longing to wrap his arms around her and hold her until she forgot all about her painand the fool Ryouga, who had so abruptly stopped visiting as P-Chan, that it had broken her naïve heart. He quickly turned and looked nervously in the older girl's direction, hoping that Nabiki hadn't noticed his plaintive countenance, but was relieved to find that the middle Tendou was looking too impatient to have noticed. The big sister nodded tersely at his hands, apparently eager to display Akane's gift to her. He slowly pulled his hands out from behind his back and presented to his fiancée the sleepy little dog he and Nabiki had bought that afternoon at the pet shop.

Akane looked down at the little black lump with wide eyes. She seemed for a moment to be wavering on indecision, and both Ranma and Nabiki—though they would certainly never admit it out loud—felt a wave of panic as they watched her, wondering if perhaps it was presumptuous of them to be attempting to replace the pet she had loved so much. She reached forward gently and stroked the soft velveteen skin of the pug and silently drew back when the black mound groaned at her and snuggled further into Ranma's hands. She melted at the sweet defenselessness of the puppy, and turned a reassuring gaze up to the two people before her. The gift-givers felt a weight being lifted off of their shoulders seeing her heartening expression.

"Who is this?" she asked in a small voice as she looked between them, with those wet, smiling eyes. 

"This," Nabiki answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "is your new pet. We could all see how much you missed P-Chan and someone here thought it'd be a nice idea to get you a new one." 

Ranma tensed at the reference, no matter how indirect, and glowered at Nabiki. "I-it wasn't my idea." 

Nabiki turned to him, a blank expression upon her face. "Did I say it was?" she returned flatly.

"I don't know what to say," Akane admitted softly as she reached forward and lifted the pup from Ranma's hands. The little animal gave a single exhausted groan, but quickly found comfort against Akane as she pulled him to her chest and cradled him there with one of her hands. Her features were still demure, but no doubt grateful, as she looked up at the two of them and smiled. She didn't know quite who to thank, but she felt, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Ranma had more to do with it than he was leading on. Surprisingly enough, Nabiki had probably been the one to put up the money to buy the little puppy, in addition. Her smile turned into a grin. They could be so sweet when they were worried. "Thank you" 

Nabiki patted her little sister on the shoulder again. "Well. It was about time you got over that little porker, anyway. You're welcome, sis." She winked briefly and mouthed "his idea" at the shorthaired girl before turning into the dark hall and walking slowly up the stairs to her room.

Ranma and Akane stood for a moment, peering down at the little black dog that cuddled sleepily against Akane's breast. Ranma smiled inwardly. It felt good to see Akane's pet do that and not have to feel jealous about it.

Akane stroked her hand against the sleeping dog as Ranma silently looked on. As she stroked, she luxuriated in the unfamiliar joy that came with sharing the puppy's presence with Ranma. _Is this what it's like to have children with someone?_ her mind blurted unexpectedly. Her cheeks reddened, and she attempted desperately to get her mind away from the thought, refusing to consider it too much. "So. Umwhat should I call him?" Akane inquired to ward off her inner turmoil.

He met her gaze and then let it fall back to the dog. "I dunno" he stammered. He watched the puppy sleep against his fiancée's chest. "How bout P-Chan?" Off of a questioning look from Akane, he quickly explained himself. "Y'know Pug-Cute'." 

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Kasumi looked up at her little sister as she gazed adoringly down at her little dog. She smiled privately. 

The eldest Tendou daughter turned the fabric over and raised a finger to her sister to get her attention. "Look at this," she said in an eager voice. Her hand revealed to Akane the stark patterns on the front of the cloth, stitched into the green silk with painstaking care, and long, glinting threads. Akane gave a small gasp at the intricate designs and squinted her eyes at the pattern to make it out from where she was sitting. The cloth had a wild herd of horses roaming across its front, several different hues of green thread knotting about their powerful, graceful hooves like wispy strands of hay on an open plain. "Remember the story mother used to tell to you when you were small? About the baby horse?" Kasumi asked hopefully as she studied her sister's reaction.

Akane looked back up at Kasumi. She gave a small smile and a light shrug of her petite shoulders. "Do you mean the one with the little horse that couldn't find her way back to her family?" 

"That's the one!" Kasumi cried, delighted that the younger girl had remembered. The story had been one of Kasumi's favorites, as well.

"Kasumi-oneechan, you're so sentimental," Akane laughed good-naturedly. "Here I'm supposed to become an adult, and I'm wearing a kimono with a picture from my favorite story when I was three or four years old." The irony certainly hadn't escaped the girl, but even so, she thought it sweet that her sister would take such considerations on her behalf. 

Kasumi smiled warmly. "The joys of childhood prepare us for the joys that come later in life, _ne_? You had to pass through childhood before you could make it here."

Akane shuffled the dog on her lap and pulled her knees up a bit. "Well that's true."

Kasumi began to tuck the folds of fabric and pin them as she hummed a little tune to herself. Akane hadn't understood fully what she was suggesting; but she was sure it was only a matter of time before she did.

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A moist Ranma jogged up the steps of the house, the black cotton of his shirt soaked through with perspiration. He lightly dabbed at his forehead with the small hand towel he had draped over his shoulders. It had been several hours training with his dad, and he had completely lost track of the time, though it felt good to prepare for the challenge he felt was coming in the next few days. As he twisted on the landing to run to his room and change, he was surprised to find that a smaller figure bumped into his wet chest, causing them both to "_oompf_". 

Akane peered up at him momentarily before turning away again, a blush tracing her cheeks. She sidled about him uneasily with a mumbled "goodnight" and walked briskly in the direction of her bedroom.

He turned about and self-consciously lifted the towel to his forehead again to wipe away the stray droplets that trickled across his skin. "You goin' to bed already?" he asked.

She turned and paused to give him a funny look. "Already'?" she echoed. "It's past eleven, you know."

"It is?" He was genuinely surprised, and searched the shadows of the dim hallway for the clock.

"Yeah," she said with a hint of sarcasm, but a sincere smile. She fidgeted for a moment and watched him mop the back of his neck with the towel. When he had finished and seemed satisfied enough with his work, he peered in her direction again, only to be greeted by a small wave of Akane's hand. "Well, sweet dreams," she said as she turned about once more to go to her room.

"Hey, wait a sec." His hand reached forward to grab her tapered fingers. She felt an electricity go up through them, mingled with the moisture from his workout. She glanced back at him, curious of his motive. 

He jerked his head involuntarily at a cough from someone's room down the hall, but remained resolute in holding onto her hand. He cleared his throat and took a few steps towards her, bringing his other hand to gently clasp around her other arm. "Can I, ummm hug you g'night?" he asked in an almost inaudible voice.

She smiled and leaned towards him, closing the air between them slightly, enough so that they could feel one another's body heat. "Why?" she teased in an equally hushed voice.

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. Why did she need to ask questions? "Just felt like it," he replied, a slight hurt to his voice. His grip slowly began to loosen itself from her arm as he took a step back, away from her. "N-never mind, then. Goodnight."

She panicked as she felt him pull away. "No, no," she whispered as she clutched a hand over his to hold it in place, and slowly walked into his embrace. She didn't care how wet his clothes were; his sweat smelled clean and the gentle musk of a martial artist's training hung over them, making her feel very at home in his arms. Her small hands shyly worked their way up the ridge of his back, and his fell awkwardly to her hips, no her waist, nosomewhere in between. She mindedly pressed her front against him to shift his hands higher up her back, and felt relieved when he obliged and slid his palms up along her curves, where he rested them in a gentlemanly manner on her shoulders.

They stood for a time, until he hesitantly dipped his head to whisper a reticent "g'night, Akane" to her coconut-scented hair.

"Goodnight, Ranma."

With that, they parted ways, giving one another's hands one last light squeeze, and walked quickly in opposite directions to their respective bedrooms, excited flurries in their stomachs.


End file.
